TALL WORK BOOT - a difficult birth!

I had this odd shaped piece of Mayday wood, from a tree I had cut down in my backyard about 5 years ago. It had contracted some sort of virus, so it had to come down. The tree was about 30 years in the making so I had a lot of wood to choose from. Most of the wood I gave away to people who needed some fire wood. The weird and gnarled stuff I kept for some boot building.The wood offered some extreme variations in grain, colour and texture, so when I cut a blank for a boot I never knew where the wood would take me. This variation is evident in the enclosed pictures – one tree much variation. I had started work on this one several months ago and never got totally enthused about the project. It just wasn’t sending me to some ecstatic exhilaration! Or in simple terms I got bored with it and prolonged the time to completion!Recently I had some extra time on my hands, I pushed the carving, added some eyelets and did some stitch work shown in pictures 5 and 6.Come hell or high water the boot had to be completed!